Jairam Ramesh's legacy is an Indian environment ministry with an identity

Jairam Ramesh is now a senior minister in the Indian government. Photograph: Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty Images

In March, during the release of India's tiger census, some friendly banter between the then environment minister Jairam Ramesh and corporate affairs minister Salman Khursheed saw the latter observe that Ramesh was acquiring a tiger's features. "Run foul of him, and he will turn into a man-eater," Khursheed joked. Khursheed hoped Ramesh would not "land in the endangered" list like the tigers, words that have this week proved prophetic.

On Tuesday, India's prime minister Manmohan Singh elevated Ramesh to a senior minister's rank, but also shifted him out of the environment and forests ministry to rural development where, Singh said, Ramesh's talents would be "better utilised".

It had been coming. The bullish Ramesh, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology had upset many a government and business lobby's applecart. Until he took reins of his ministry in 2009, most Indians could not place who their environment minister was or what s/he said or did. The ministers collaborated with all mega projects such as dams and power plants, reducing the ministry to a rubber stamp.

When development becomes paramount in a country like India, green concerns, however justified, are ignored. When Ramesh took over, India was one half of "ChinIndia"; growing at a 8-9% and courted as a future economic powerhouse. Sections of the Indian establishment took it so seriously that they seemed to forget that vast stretches of India are lagging behind, and are closer to sub-Saharan Africa than China in development indicators such as literacy, maternal and child mortality.

Some of India's more controversial projects were coming up in such areas, home to tribes and biodiversity-rich forests. Examples include a $12bn steel project awarded to South Korean firm Posco, Vedanta Resources' bauxite mining project in eastern India and a controversial mega nuclear power plant, the world's largest and with French reactors, in Jaitapur. Others, such as a high-rise housing complex in Mumbai, violated Indian laws that prohibit buildings along the coast.

As Ramesh observed in a "hedgehog versus fox" debate in May: "India needs to be liberated both from the 'high GDP growth hedgehogs' and the 'conservation at all costs hedgehogs'. What India needs, he said, is a smooth, cunning and crafty fox that balances high growth and conservation. "The hedgehog view (sticking to one big idea) is unresponsive and inattentive to the untidiness and complexity of real life," he observed.

Ramesh lashed out against what he saw as "politicisation of climate science". He insisted India should not depend on western scientists' studies on climate change, and initiated a series of Indian studies on greenhouse gas emissions and black carbon.

All decisions were made public on his ministry's websites, some running at more than 100 pages, with scores of appendices.

But raising the green ante meant raising the hackles of powerful industrialists and cabinet colleagues. In April, Ramesh told a meeting chaired by Singh that India's target of adding 100,000MW power from 2012-17 was ecologically impossible. Ramesh could also be outspoken, on one occasion declaring: "If there is a Nobel prize for dirt and filth, India will win it, no doubt." But Ramesh eventually compromised, clearing the steel, coal and nuclear power plant projects and even a new airport for Mumbai. So why did he go?

Most analysts agree that Ramesh's demarcation of forests into a "go" and "no-go" zone for coal plants was his undoing. An estimated 660m tonnes of coal fell within the no-go zones. The most recent tussle was over a coal project in a forested area in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, with the coal minister and powerful industrialists pressuring Singh for a speedy clearance.

His successor is Jayanti Natarajan, is an articulate lawyer, a spokesperson for Congress party and a former junior minister in the civil aviation ministry. Ramesh raised the bar for the environment ministry's performance and if Natarajan raises it further, or at least maintains it, it will be good for India.

• TV Padma is a Delhi-based science journalist

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